STOP: Don't Buy Tricentis Licenses...
...not yet and probably not direct because there is a ton of value you'd be leaving on the table.
Before anyone forwards this to a Tricentis rep, this isn't a slam piece or anything against their tools. Tricentis is great! We have a very strong relationship and have since 2017. We put their products in front of clients all the time. The problem isn't the software, it's how most teams buy it and what happens in the 90 days after the PO gets signed.
Here's the pattern I see all the time. A team sizes up various test automation tools, sits through the demos, gets a quote, approvals and signatures, and licenses are delivered. But...then the rollout stalls. Seats get less and less used. Nobody's quite sure how to wire it up and fit it into the delivery pipeline. Six months later you're starting to get pings about renewing licenses you barely touched.
That IS the definition of shelfware. I've talked a lot about software teams not having a lot of tooling problems, and you've guessed it...this is also not a tooling problem. It's an operating problem.
The real cost isn't the license
This pains me to say, as one who has boot-strapped several businesses where we unilaterally had a "build-first/buy-never" mentality, but for most orgs the license is actually the cheap part . The biggest expense is the capability you paid for and never found (or operationalized). You bought faster regression, fewer defect escapes, lower rework and Tricentis does a great job providing that! What you got was a logo in a PPT deck showcasing yet another tool in the stack.
When a team was in the discovery phase for a new tool and comparing one toolset against another, they probably weren't asking the right questions. When we look at tools, and Tricentis is no different, I hope people are trying to see past the marketing. I hope they aren't asking the question "which tool wins." I hope they are asking "which of these will my team still be using, and getting value from in a year from now." Its a slightly different position and one that is much more difficult to answer or predict. However, I can tell you the demo won't answer it...guaranteed.
What a partner actually does
This is where buying through someone like Merito changes the math. Not because we hand you a nicely packaged license and service offering, but because we close the gap between the purchase and the payoff.
Buy Tricentis through Merito and you get:
- Honest expectation-setting before you spend a dollar. What it does well, where it struggles, whether it even fits your stack.
- Realistic benchmarks instead of vendor slideware. What "good" actually looks like for a team your size.
- Procurement handled, often at a better price than you'd land on your own (more on that in a second).
- A quick start that's customizable. Setup, integration into your release gates, first suites running.
- A rollout built so the thing doesn't rot into shelfware by R2.
We've done this enough to know where rollouts die. That means we can help you route around those spots before you hit them.
The counterintuitive part: the middle man is cheaper
Adding a partner usually costs less, not more. Primarily for two reasons.
- First, the line item, because we hold bulk/partner licensing, so a lot of the time our quote comes in under what you'd be offered going direct. Same software, smaller number.
- Second, the cost that never shows up on the invoice. The real price of a tool isn't the sticker. It's implementation time, the months before it produces anything, and the seats you pay for and never use. Shrink those and you've saved more than any discount on the license line. A clean rollout pays for the partner several times over.
Again, its counterintuitive, but a lot of executives understand this model, its how most of them create big wins, for less. Buy it direct and you can end up paying more, twice.
Before you sign anything
If you're mid-evaluation right now, ask your team three things:
- Do you actually know what this tool struggles with, or only what the demo showed you?
- Who's wiring it into your pipeline, and what happens to those seats if they don't?
- Is your quote benchmarked against anything real?
If those don't have clean answers, don't sign yet. Talk to us first. We'll give you the straight version. What fits, what it costs, and what it takes to make it stick. Tricentis or otherwise.
